Now Playing

Opinion Journal: Mexican Massacre

Columnist Bret Stephens on the recent mass grave discovery.

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

... the ... body ... that's great ... what's going on with America's neighbors to the south ... and what do unions have against black workers ... welcome to Opinion Journal Live on Jason Riley ... on Tuesday Mexican Marines discovered ... seventy two bodies including fourteen women ... they're believed to been killed by drug cartel ... here to discuss the situation is Brett Stevens a college The Wall Street Journal ... welcome Brett ... now this isn't the first discovery back in a fifty five bodies were found an abandoned mine outside in Mexico City ... just last month another fifty one bodies were trash dump ... outside of Monterey ... what's going on here for a ... beloved telling us what's going on ... Mexican ... the murder rate in Mexico since President Felipe the cover on ... declared war on drug cartels in two thousand six has been ... tremendously high ... more than twenty thousand people have been ... killed ... I think it's alarmed a lot of Americans in fact it's been a lot of talk about Mexico being ... a failed state so we have to vote on the one and bear in mind the kind of violence that is ... taking place ... in this case against migrant workers also against American consular officials ... on the other hand I think that a lot of viewers need to keep a sense of proportion about ... the the scale and range ... and nature of the killing ... on most ... or about ninety percent of the people who've been killed in violence in Mexico are themselves members of drug cartels ... who've been warring with one another for ... territory ... the overwhelming amount of the violence is taking place in just six days of the Black stars thirty or thirty two states ... mostly ... although not exclusively ... in ... in the north ... and you also should keep us some comparative statistics in mind the homicide rate in two thousand IV in Mexico was about ... ten for one hundred thousand people ... in Brazil which we don't think of this failed state its twenty five per hundred thousand in Venice will up ... its forty eight and probably even higher ... so by the standards of Latin America it's not you know you're not talking about a catastrophic situation to worries that the situation not catastrophic ... well you mentioned of Calderon starting this ... initiative in those six when he took over ... and he said more than twenty thousand dead here ... of what is the evidence that he's making progress is this work ... well the voters of of progress is is the fact that these drug cartels which previously operated with impunity ... are clearly feeling a lot of people are feeling heat from one and the fro from each other ... as they compete for Ford Territory ... they're feeling heat from ... the Mexican government ... you know back in nineteen eighty five I was I was growing up in Mexico at the time ... there is a famous case an American undercover DTE AG operating out of Guadalajara was murdered Teteak of Iran ... and the FBI didn't investigation at the time they discovered was that the ... drug cartels were had not bought off ... of police official state officials government officials ... really up until the highest level so Mexico has had a stroke from for a long time ... what what was different was the government ... wasn't ... previously fighting it did ... in many ways it was colluding with the ... cutter on has finally decided that he hopes to impose a rule of law in the country and he's not can allow Mexico says that to become ... a narco state By style ... OK ... now these migrants that were recently found on ... many were from Ecuador ... El Salvador Honduras summer from ... Brazil they were headed to the U S it was believed ... and got into a dispute with the use of ... drugs with this drug cartel over perhaps paring drugs into the U S ... or that the smuggling fees for human ... to human smuggling into the US ... one of the arguments that the Wall Street Journal that RealPage's made ... three years is that our policy which focuses on tracking down these economic migrants ... is this or counterproductive ... because ... of these these economic migrants are really running interference ... for the bad guys and if we were to give ... the people coming here to work a legal ... way to calm we will be able to focus all our attention on these human smugglers and drug traffickers and so forth ... but there's another item out there that says ... one way to reduce the violence is simply to de criminalize ... the drugs themselves is that a viable option that we should consider ... well look no one has made the case for a more rational immigration system then you when we saw ... with this massacre ... is a result of this ... incredible immigration policy we have which ... forces people to take these desperate measures put their hands put themselves in the hands of bespoke we built this up ... um and and and put their own lives ... put their own lives at risk ... as for the drug legalization argument ... good luck with that OK it's not going to happen of politically in this country any time ... so you're talking about kind of a theoretical universe ... the real issue is ... is Mexico going to have the rule of law which is ... sufficient to contain the drug problem you can look at the example of Columbia which up until about a decade ago had a much larger prom with their drug cartels that Mexico has ... today ... they undertook in collaboration with United States was called plan Colombia ... they defeated ... the cartel's the largely have to have been able to defeat the narco terrorist ... fart and Colombia today is a country ... ruled democratically and through of legal institutions and that's what Mexico needs to adopt in its own right obviously tailoring it to a somewhat different ... situation ... but the issue here is a Mexican rule of law and will they be able to win four said ... not this time the skies scheme of legalizing drugs in this country which is that the ... well ... and then I guess one thing we can say with some certainty as to the extent that the U S policy ... focuses exclusively on millet rising the border ... you're only expanding the market for the bad guys the other side of the border ... when it comes to drug smuggling document broader for human smuggling and what have you which can't be ... can be a good thing but ... thank you for joining us for ... lunch there okay ... okay ... next a few words about labor unions and employment ... the unemployment rate in the US is of course nine point five percent were spent for some time ... but among blacks and pushing sixteen percent ... and among black teens its forty percent ... which is the highest of any group ... get labor unions are ... fighting tooth and nail ... to keep Wal-Mart ... from building a store that would bring thousands of jobs ... to low income neighborhood ... in Brooklyn ... where the Sobel rights leaders when you need ... off describing tea party activists is raise the ... only doubtful that create ... labor unions might present themselves as friends ... of the working class ... look when they ... fight ... to keep jobs out of neighborhoods ... with that already have high unemployment rates ... are clearly part of the problem ... that's all for Opinion Journal Live today please join us tomorrow and every game noon and Jason ...